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Sermon for the First Sunday in Advent

“Let us therefore cast off the works of darkness”

Adventus Christi. The Advent of Christ. What does it mean? It means the coming of Christ. Advent celebrates the coming of God towards us in Jesus Christ. One of the Advent questions asks “who is this?” who comes. In the coming of Christ we learn the meaning of the coming of God towards us.

The mystery of Advent is wonderfully captured in today’s readings. Paul talks about the law, explicitly referencing the Ten Commandments understood as fulfilled in love, a love which has to do with our “cast[ing] off the works of darkness” and “put[ting] on the armour of light”, even more “put[ting] on the Lord Jesus Christ”. It marks a transition, a turning from darkness to light, to our lives as lived in the light of God’s Word and Truth. The Gradual Psalm prays that God will turn us as well as “turn[ing] again and quicken[ing] us” and for what end? “That thy people may rejoice in thee.” Advent is about the turning of God towards us in Jesus Christ.

What does that mean? It means that there is at once joy and judgment, even the wrath of the angry Christ! There is joy in the triumphal entry of Christ into Jerusalem but, in the wisdom of Thomas Cranmer in the sixteenth century, instead of ending the passage with the response of the multitude who answer the question “Who is this?” by saying “This is Jesus the Prophet of Nazareth of Galilee,” the reading continues with the story of Christ’s “cast[ing] out all them that sold and bought in the temple”, “overthrow[ing] the tables of the money changers”, and berating all who heard him with the words: “It is written, My house shall be called the house of prayer; but ye have made it a den of thieves.” The contrast could not be greater between the joyous cries of “Hosanna to the Son of David” and Christ’s words of anger and rebuke at the betrayal and misuse of the temple, the house of God, and the things of God. Yet that is exactly the point of the Advent.

There is joy and there is judgment. The joy is in the judgment. God cares enough to turn to us! Why? Because he seeks our turning to him. It means that we have to confront the works of darkness which stand in such stark opposition to the light of Christ. How do we begin to turn and be found in the turning of God to us?

The Law. We heard the Ten Commandments this morning. We do not hear them enough, I fear, in our judgment averse culture and yet the Ten Commandments, which concentrate the Torah, meaning the instruction or teaching of God for us, are themselves altogether about the turning of God in truth to us so that we may turn to him in truth and love. It requires a change, a change in us. The whole point of the Law is not external judgment and condemnation. The whole point of hearing the Law lies in the possibilities of change, a change of heart and mind, a metanoia of the spirit in us, a transformation from the works of darkness and despair to a life of light and hope.

This is, I think, the great joy and wonder of the Advent season. It will not do to overlook and ignore the Ten Commandments because then we can make no sense of how they are fulfilled in love, the love which seeks to cleanse our souls from darkness and despair, the love which is nothing less than the coming of God towards us in Jesus Christ, the one whom if we attend to his Torah, his teaching, we will know as Lord and Saviour, as God with us. This is the entire point and meaning of the Advent season without which Christmas is so much tinsel and wrap, so much fuss and bother, an empty festival, even “a tale told by an idiot/ full of sound and fury,/ signifying nothing”, with apologies to Shakespeare.

Without the coming of the Law, the coming of Christ is meaningless. Without the strong measure of truth in word proclaimed and sacraments celebrated, there can be no joy. There can be no joy without the judgment upon the darkness which we have chosen in one way or another. Therein lies the rub, perhaps. What darkness, we protest? Well, try this darkness on for size. The darkness of supposing that your own economic and personal well-being is the sole reason and purpose for your existence. Such is a denial of God and his will towards us. The Law becomes an oppressive restraint and we have no way to grasp Paul’s great insight that “love is the fulfilling of the Law”. The Law is the explicit moment of God’s turning to us to reveal his will for us. It is, we may say, the universal moral code for our humanity. This is the great spiritual insight of an army of spiritual teachers down through the ages and in many, many different cultures and religions as well. It marks one of the moments when Christianity engages and connects with other religions and ideas and brings to them the fundamentally radical idea of God engaging directly and intimately with our humanity. Such is the meaning of the coming of Christ, the one who fulfills what we cannot possibly fulfill in and of ourselves. Such is the advent of Christ.

This is the challenge for our world and day. To realize that the real is not the social and the political, the economic and the psychological, the scientific and the material. The real is God and only in God can those aspects of our lives have any reality and meaning. It is not that there is no place for trading and buying, for the exchange of goods and by extension, no place for other forms of inquiry and interest. No. The point is that holy places and things are not to be used and misused to other ends and purposes which ultimately deny the great wonder and truth of God turning to us so that we might turn to him.

Advent is the great and joyous wake-up call for our humanity to turn to the God who turns to us. He casts out the money-changers, ourselves in all of our preoccupations and predilections, so that we might be awakened to “cast off the works of darkness” and “put on the armour of light”, even more, “put[ting] on the Lord Jesus Christ”. We are defined in the essence of our being not by our appetites and our attractions, our desires and our orientations. Such things belong to what the confession simply and profoundly calls “the devices and desires of our own hearts. We are defined and find the truth of our being in the will of God revealed in creation and in the Law as fulfilled in Christ.

“Let us therefore cast off the works of darkness”

Fr. David Curry
Advent I, 2016